Vanilla
by SabaceanBabe
Summary: “Dude.  Vanilla?”


Title: b Vanilla /b

Author: SabaceanBabe

Rating: G

Word count: 1,050

Spoilers: pretty general for early season 2

Author's notes: This was written for the lovely and talented and incredible-beyond-words poisontaster for the occasion of her birthday and is my first foray into the Supernatural 'verse. Thanks for being such an inspiration, dear. :)

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"Dude. _Vanilla_?"

Sam's amused tone grated on Dean's nerves like fingernails on a chalkboard. He gripped the steering wheel hard and shot his brother a glare.

With a chuckle – a fucking _irritating_ chuckle – Sam continued, "I never would've pegged you as a vanilla kinda guy."

And, just that quickly, the irritation was gone and Dean was back in Argent, Texas. That town had been barely more than a wide spot in the road, but what it had lacked in excitement and population, it more than made up for in the person of Andy McCain.

Dean's fingers relaxed on the wheel as he remembered Andy. Damn, he hadn't thought about her in years. Pretty, but not beautiful, and with a laugh that just caught you up and didn't let go. He had met her over ice cream.

Beside him, Sam still tried to needle him about his choice of vanilla, but it wasn't working anymore. Just to piss him off, Dean smiled at him and leaned forward, turned up the volume on Cheap Trick, and settled his eyes on the road. He allowed himself to slip into memory, one of the few memories he had of some random town and random strangers that didn't include fear and pain.

xxxxxxxxx

"I'm sorry, did you say vanilla?" The expression on her face was polite, but surprised. There was a light dusting of freckles across her nose that Dean could only describe as cute. He hated cute.

"Yeah. Something wrong with that?" he challenged.

"Oh, no." She smiled and her whole face lit up with it. Dean stared. "I just didn't expect it, so I wanted to make sure I heard you right." Her eyes strayed over his torn jeans and leather jacket and her expression morphed into something a little more mischievous. "I would've thought you'd pick something a little more dangerous."

Dean leaned his arms on the counter and smiled back at her. "Well," he looked at her nametag, "_Andrea_, I never thought of ice cream as being all that dangerous."

She looked around the little hole-in-the-wall shop before leaning toward him to whisper, "Call me Andy. And I wasn't so much thinking the _ice cream_ was dangerous…" Then she winked and backed away from the counter, turned to get his ice cream.

_What the hell was I thinking? This girl is so not cute._ Dean's eyes stayed on her, watching every move, the smooth skin of her thighs below white shorts as she walked, the way her muscles moved beneath the snugly fitting red t-shirt when she scooped the hard-packed ice cream. _So not cute. I wonder when she gets off work…_ Little Andy was just what he needed to take his mind off Dad and Sam and their newest blowout. He didn't want to think about Sam going off to college without them (without him).

He still watched her as she approached him, dish in hand. He leaned against the back of his chair to make more of a point of how much he enjoyed the view and she quirked a pale eyebrow at him as she slid the bowl with its three scoops of vanilla ice cream toward him. He'd only ordered two.

"You staying in town?" she asked, placing his bill face down on the counter and sliding her pen into the pocket of her apron.

"Just outside." He lifted the spoon to his lips. "You live around here?" The ice cream was too cold for the size of the bite he'd just taken and he couldn't stop a gasp.

Andy laughed. "Brain freeze?"

Dean winced. "Guess vanilla's a little more dangerous than you thought, huh?"

"Oh, I don't know. I think I can handle a little vanilla." The mischief was back.

"So," Dean took a much smaller bite of ice cream and then caught her eyes. "You doing anything tonight?"

"Who wants to know?"

He licked ice cream from his spoon and placed it carefully in the dish, all the while still holding her eyes with his, and then he stood and held out his hand. "Dean Winchester. Damn glad to meet you."

"Andy McCain." Her hand was warm and small in his.

"When're you off, Andy McCain? And what kind of trouble can we get into in a little town like this?"

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Dean rolled down the window a crack to get some airflow. The vocal stylings of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers flowed from the Impala's speakers and Sam dozed, his head resting against the passenger-side window. Realizing that he wasn't going to get a rise out of Dean, Sam had finished his pistachio ice cream, then settled back into the seat and fallen asleep, lulled by the rhythm of the road and classic rock.

They'd spent three weeks in Argent. Three weeks in a trailer park/motel half a dozen miles outside of the town while Dad recovered from wounds that they never would've been able to explain if he and Sam'd tried to get him into a hospital. Instead, Dean had broken into a general store a few towns east of Argent and helped himself to antibiotics and the other crap he'd needed to sew Dad up. It was pure luck they'd stumbled across that motel, but then they'd always operated well on luck.

Dad had been in no shape to go any further and Dean had felt a little guilty the first time he'd walked out and left Sam to deal. Andy had helped him ditch the guilt, or at least had helped to shove it into the background, but he'd stayed pissed at Sammy anyway, what with all the talk of leaving them, breaking up the family to have a "normal" life. What the fuck was normal, anyway?

Normal was his father and brother tearing each other up with words. Normal was being there for each other when they needed it, watching each other's backs, trying to keep the dark at bay. Normal had nothing to do with college and friends and staying in one place for more than a few weeks. John and Dean had understood that; Sammy hadn't.

Dean glanced at his still-sleeping brother from the corner of his eye.

Sam had learned about normal the hard way, something both John and Dean had tried to protect him from. And although Dean was sorry about what had happened to Jess, he was happy to have his brother here with him now. Especially now that Sam was all Dean had left.

"Yeah, dude," he whispered to his sleeping brother, "vanilla."


End file.
